Shady Oak Restaurant And Tavern

ALL OUR BEST - BEST PLACE TO SIT BY THE RIVER - JEFF LIBBY

July 4, 2004|By Jeff Libby, Sentinel Staff Writer

This dowdy dock-and-dine eatery has been perched alongside the St. Johns River since about 1956, the same year the Whitehair drawbridge first joined Volusia and Lake counties along New York Avenue. And you can pretty much tell.

Things haven't changed much at the Shady Oak Restaurant in DeLand. The price of a draft beer is $1, cheaper than the soda. And when the manager, Jean Tuttle, says catfish dinner, she means a pound of it.

"I like a country-cooking place, a laid-back place where a workingman can come," she says.

The boats pile up along the rambling wooden pier. It's split in the middle by a deck with picnic-table dining below imitation-bamboo blinds. People sit over the water and coo or critique the odd alligator that's bound to glide by; the fish that jumps.

You can find anyone here. From the tattooed young ones in from fishing bare-chested and in bikinis to the solo old-timer, still as an egret under his vinyl baseball cap.

After the lunch rush that takes its time, the shadows of the oaks and palms slip from the dark water back into the grasses. The sun starts setting. It hangs out like a lantern below the bridge, above the boats, then drops behind the trees.

At a place like this, you can gently let visitors know that, nope, the Nile isn't the only well-known river that flows north. The St. Johns does too.